Founded by the industrialist and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie in 1900, Carnegie Mellon University is a private institution located in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. The university began as the Carnegie Technical Schools and subsequently became the Carnegie Institute of Technology. In 1967, the Carnegie Institute of Technology merged with the Mellon Institute of Industrial Research to form Carnegie Mellon University. The university has a total undergraduate enrollment of 6,300. Undergraduate students at Carnegie Mellon have opportunities to participate in research by receiving grants or summer fellowships in support of their field of research. It has a 147-acre main campus in Downtown Pittsburgh and utilizes a semester-based academic calendar.

Although Carnegie Mellon is well know for its programs in science and technology, its seven schools and colleges include the College of the Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences and the College of Fine Arts. Its graduate programs include the highly ranked Carnegie Institute of Technology, Tepper School of Business and School of Computer Science. Notable alumni include former General Motors CEO and Secretary of Defense, Charles Erwin Wilson; billionaire hedge fund investor David Tepper; James Gosling, creator of the Java programming language; Andy Bechtolsheim, co-founder of Sun Microsystems; pop artists Andy Warhol and Burton Morris; Mountaineer and Author Aron Ralston; and astronauts Edgar Mitchell (of Apollo 14) and Judith Resnik, who perished in the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster.

Carnegie Mellon fields 17 varsity athletic teams as part of the University Athletic Association conference of the NCAA Division III. Although the university guarantees housing for all four years, only freshmen are required to live on campus. Approximately 20 percent of the student population is affiliated with Greek life, which consists of more than 20 fraternities and sororities.